Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is made up of representatives from a range of schools and departments and determines the mission and goals of the Institute.

Victor Asal; PhD – Director of the Center for Policy and Research/Associate

Professor,Political Science Victor Asal is Director of the Center for Policy Research and an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and the director of the Homeland Security Certificate and MPA Concentration in the Department of Public Administration and Policy. He received his PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also, along with R. Karl Rethemeyer, the co-director of the Project on Violent Conflict. Dr. Asal is affiliated with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. Dr. Asal’s research focuses on the choice of violence by non-state organizational actors as well as the causes of political discrimination by states against different groups such as sexual minorities, women and ethnic groups. In addition, Prof. Asal has done research on the impact of nuclear proliferation and on the pedagogy of simulations. Asal has been involved in research projects funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, The Department of Homeland Security, The National Science Foundation, and The Office of Naval Research.

Katharine Briar-Lawson is an experienced academic administrator and national expert on family focused practice and child and family policy. Among her books (co-authored) are Family-Centered Policies & Practices: International Implications (2001) and (co-edited) Innovative Practices with Vulnerable Children and Families (2001). She has recently co-edited two volumes on Evaluation Research in Child Welfare, (2002) and Charting the Impacts of University-Child Welfare Collaboration, (2003). She is a member of the Council on Social Work Education Practice Commission; she also serves as associate editor for the New Global Development: Journal of International and Comparative Social Welfare, and is consulting editor for Social Work, as well as Family Preservation. She Co-Chairs the Gerontological Task Force for the National Association for Deans and Directors.

Geography and Planning Ray Bromley joined the faculty of UAlbany’s Department of Geography and Planning in 1985 and has served as Vice Provost for International Education since 2006. Born and raised in rural England, he did his BA and PhD degrees at Cambridge University specializing in Social Geography, Regional Development, and Latin American Studies. Before joining the Albany faculty, he taught social and regional planning for ten years at Swansea University in Wales, and he worked nine years as an urban researcher and planning consultant in Latin America. He has authored or edited six books and numerous articles on these subjects. At UAlbany he has been a recipient of the President’s and Chancellor’s Excellence in Teaching Awards, the President’s Excellence in Academic Service Award, and the Graduate Student Organization’s Outstanding Professor Award. Ray has worked as a consultant on World Bank, United Nations, UNICEF and USAID–funded projects, and to the Governments of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, New York State, and New York City.

School of Public Health, UA Dr. Carpenter, a professor of environmental health and biomedical sciences and the founding dean of the University at Albany School of Public Health, researches and advocates for the elimination of environmental contaminants, including pesticides, lead, PCBs, particulate air pollution, and electromagnetic radiation.Dr. Carpenter serves as director of the Institute for Health and Environment at the School of Public Health. He previously served as director of the Wadsworth Laboratory of the New York State Department of Health, and was named to New York's Renewable Energy Task Force, charged with implementing plans to reduce electricity use through new energy efficiency programs in industry and government.In addition to his research on environmental contaminants, Dr. Carpenter studies animal models of stroke and neurodegenerative diseases and neurotoxic agents. He devotes time to national and international activities in environmental health, and has served on the National Advisory Committee of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and on the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board of the International Joint Commission.Dr. Carpenter received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. He has more than 370 peer-reviewed publications, 6 books and 50 reviews and book chapters to his credit.

Harvey comes to UAlbany from Northern Arizona University where he currently serves as vice provost for international initiatives and director of the Center for International Education. He has also served in senior international education leadership roles at Georgia Institute of Technology, San Francisco State University, Wheaton College and the University of Nevada, Reno. He earned his Ph.D. in Higher Education and Student Affairs from The Ohio State University, an M.A. in Counseling and Guidance from Andrews University, and a B.A. in Business Administration from Caribbean Union College, Trinidad. Harvey has also published a number of peer-reviewed articles among other publications and given many keynote speeches, conference presentations, and workshops on topics including comprehensive internationalization, global learning and internationalizing STEM education, both in the US and at venues around the world. He is Past President of the Association of International Education Administrators, the world’s only organization dedicated to the professional development of leaders in the field of international higher education, and he sits on a number of international education boards and advisory committees. Under Harvey’s leadership, Northern Arizona University won the 2012 Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization.

Douglas Fish; MD – Former Head of Division of HIV/AIDS at Albany Medical College

Douglas Fish, MD is one of the New York/New Jersey AETC's lead correctional trainers. He is Medical Director of the AIDS Treatment Center at Albany Medical Center, and Division Head of the Division of HIV Medicine of Medicine at Albany Medical College (AMC). AMC is the upstate NY local performance site for the NY/NJ AETC and its HIV Correctional Regional Resource Center (RRC). In addition to being an active HIV educator in non-correctional settings, a significant part of Dr. Fish's clinical and educational responsibilities is within NY correctional facilities, which detain the largest number of HIV-infected inmates nationally. Dr. Fish and his faculty members staff approximately 15 HIV specialty clinics per month at Coxsackie Regional Medical Unit, which serves inmates in 24 facilities in upstate New York. He is also the Course Director for clinical educational programs targeting providers at Riker's Island and correctional facilities in New Jersey.

Samantha Friedman is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of Sociology and Associate Director of the Lewis Mumford Center at the University at Albany, SUNY. Her research focuses on name discrimination in the housing market, the racial and ethnic segregation of home owners and renters, and the neighborhood attainment of racial and ethnic groups by their nativity, generational, and familial status. She is also currently studying the impact of housing on asthma and exploring the association between disability status and housing and neighborhood conditions. She is co-author of The Housing Divide: How Generations of Immigrants Fare in New York’s Housing Market (2007) and has published articles in several journals including Demography, Social Problems, Social Science Research, Urban Studies, and Housing Policy Debate.

T. Gregory Dewey; Ph.D – President of Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Dr. Dewey became the ninth president of Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences on July 1, 2014. Prior to joining ACPHS, Dr. Dewey served for five years as Provost at the University of La Verne in California, a comprehensive doctoral university that enrolls approximately 8,000 students across four colleges and nine regional campuses. In that capacity, he oversaw academic affairs, student affairs, student services, enrollment management, financial aid, and athletics for the institution. Dr. Dewey previously served as Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Finnigan Chair at the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) of Applied Life Science in Claremont, CA. As a founding faculty member of this pioneering institute, he played a key role in KGI’s growth during his ten years at the school, including the development of its groundbreaking Master’s of Bioscience program, the first professional master of science program in the country. Dr. Dewey began his academic career in 1982 as an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver and eventually rose to the rank of full professor. He spent 18 years at Denver, including five years as Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Alan Lizotte's substantive interests include guns and gun control, the correlates and causes of juvenile delinquency and the factors related to various forms of victimization. He enjoys applying statistical and mathematical models to these problems. He has published extensively on these topics. His recent publications include: Gangs and Delinquency in Developmental Perspective (2003), New York: Cambridge University Press, by Terence Thornberry, Marvin Krohn, Alan Lizotte, Carolyn Smith, and Kimberly Tobin. This book won the American Society of Criminology’s Hindelang Award for the Most Outstanding Contribution to Research in Criminology in 2003; "Causes and Consequences of Delinquency: Findings from the Rochester Youth Development Study" by Terence Thornberry, Alan J. Lizotte, Marvin D. Krohn, and Carolyn Smith and Pamela K. Porter in Taking Stock in Delinquency: An Overview of Findings from Contemporary Longitudinal Studies (2003), , Terence P. Thornberry and Marvin D. Krohn (eds.) New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, pp. 11-46; The Delinquency of Children Born To Young Mothers: Results from the Rochester Youth Developments Study,. Criminology, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 1249-1286, 2003; and "Linked Lives: The Intergenerational Transmission of Antisocial Behavior" in Jounal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 171-184,(2003), by Terence Thornberry, Andrienne Freeman-Gallant, Alan J. Lizotte, Marvin Krohn, and Carolyn Smith.

Department Chair and Professor, received his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh. His primary interests are in political philosophy and ethics and their history. He is the author of Rawls's A Theory of Justice: An Introduction (2009), Global Justice (2006), What's Left of Liberalism? An Interpretation and Defense of Justice as Fairness (2000). He has published work of John Rawls, Kant, Rousseau, globalization, naturalism, and other topics. He teaches courses on contemporary ethical and political philosophy, global justice, 17th-19th century ethical theory, and the history of political philosophy.

School of Public Health Dean Philip Nasca has served as a member of numerous grant review boards for national agencies, including the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society. Previously, he worked with the New York State Department of Health, where he held a number of positions, including director of the Bureau of Cancer Epidemiology. He currently serves on the editorial board of both the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice and the Annals of Epidemiology. Nasca was appointed dean of the School of Public Health in 2007.

Vivien Ng is Associate Professor and Chair of Women's Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. Prior to joining the Women's Studies Dept. in Fall 1995, she taught Chinese history and women's studies at the University of Oklahoma for 13 years. She earned her Ph.D. in Chinese History at the University of Hawaii. She was Chair of the Women's Studies Department from 1995 to 2000 and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education from 2005-2010. She began her second stint as Department Chair in Fall 2011. Ng was the first President of the National Women's Studies Association, serving in 1993-94. She has served on the board of the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation from 1989-93. She was a Mellon Fellow at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies in 1984-85 and a Rockefeller Fellow at Hunter College in 1990-91. She has served on the editorial boards of the NWSA Journal and the Journal of Women's History. Ng is currently working on documentary projects. She is the principal researcher and associate producer for the documentary film, "Trailblazers In Habits," a film about the work of the Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong. You can follow the progress of this work on the website http://www.trailblazersinhabits.net. Her second project is about Maryknoll Sisters' medical ministry, with special focus on the life and work of Sr. Mary Mercy Hirschboeck.

Alicia Ouellette, the Associate Dean for Student Affairs, is also a Professor of Law at Albany Law School and a Professor of Bioethics in the Union Graduate College/Mt. Sinai School of Medicine Program in Bioethics. Her research focuses on health law, disability rights, family law, children’s rights, and human reproduction. Her book, Bioethics and Disability: Toward a Disability Conscious Bioethics, was published in 2011 by Cambridge University Press. She has authored numerous articles published in academic journals such as the American Journal of Law and Medicine, the Hastings Center Report, the American Journal of Bioethics, the Hastings Law Journal, the Indiana Law Journal and Oregon Law Review. She is also a co-editor of the definitive Cambridge Dictionary of Bioethics (forthcoming) (co-edited with Laurence McCullough and Robert Baker). Before joining the law faculty, Professor Ouellette served as an Assistant Solicitor General in the New York State-Attorney General’s office. As ASG, Prof. Ouellette briefed and argued more than 100 appeals on issues ranging from termination of treatment for the terminally ill to the responsibility of gun manufacturers for injuries caused by handguns.

Bill comes to UAlbany from Georgia State University where he currently serves as distinguished university professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology and as senior researcher in the Cluster on Evidence-Based Policy. Prior to that he worked at Indiana University where he served as assistant professor, associate professor, and professor. While at Indiana he was the founding Director of IU’s Workshop in Methods and served as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Criminal Justice for several years.

Some of Bill's research interests include the impact of social structure on homicide and suicide rates, the role of alcohol in violence and mortality, and the sociology of health and illness. He has received numerous awards, including a junior scholar award for his research on alcohol, the Radzinowicz Memorial Prize from the British Journal of Criminology for his research on cross-national homicide rates, and the Mueller Award for distinguished contributions to international criminal justice. He has published nearly 90 peer-reviewed articles and several other edited volumes, book chapters, and reports. Bill has served as PI or co-PI on grants totaling more than $2.5 million.

He earned his Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University at Albany and an M.A. in Criminal Justice and B.A.s in Sociology and Criminal Justice from Indiana University. He was a post-doctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University.

R. Karl Rethemeyer is Associate Dean of the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy and Chair of the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany - SUNY. Rethemeyer’s primary research interest is in social networks, their impact on social, political, and policy processes, and the methods used to study such networks. Dr. Rethemeyer’s work spans two programs of research. The first focuses on the structure and operation of collaborative and policy networks in the public sector. This work examines the challenges inherent in the management of collaborative provision of public goods and services and the political ramifications of engaging nonprofit and for-profit organizations in that effort. Most recently Dr. Rethemeyer received the Accenture Advances in Public Management Award for his research in this area. Dr. Rethemeyer’s other program of research focuses on terrorism, terrorist organizations, terrorist networks, and counter-insurgency/stabilization operations. Dr. Rethemeyer is co-director of the Project on Violent Conflict (PVC), a research center focused on these topics. His Department of Homeland Security-funded work focuses on how networks affect the use of various forms of terrorism (including suicide and CBRN attacks), the lethality of terrorist organizations, the propensity of terrorist organizations to attack civilian targets, and the propensity to choose or eschew lethal violence.

David L. Rousseau; PhD – Interim Dean of College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cyber security/ Professor, Political Science

Professor Rousseau’s research interests focus on military conflict, shared identity, political development, and foreign policy. His first book, which is entitled Democracy and War: Institutions, Norms, and the Evolution of International Conflict (Stanford University Press, 2005), examines the relationship between institutional structures and political norms within international disputes using statistical analyses, historical case studies, laboratory experiments, and computer simulations. His second book, which is entitled Identifying Threats and Threatening Identities: The Social Construction of Realism and Liberalism (Stanford University Press, 2006), explores the impact of shared identity on threat perception. In addition to his book publications, Professor Rousseau has published articles in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and the Journal of Peace Research. Professor Rousseau received his MPP from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and his PhD in Political Science from the University of Michigan. Prior to arriving at the University at Albany, Professor Rousseau taught at Korea University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University at Buffalo (SUNY).

Fardin Sanai; Vice President for Development/Executive Director of The University at Albany Foundation, University at Albany

Fardin Sanai was appointed to the position of Vice President for University Development and Executive Director of The University at Albany Foundation in Fall 2007. Mr. Sanai is responsible for all fund raising, alumni affairs and foundation operations at the University. Before joining the University at Albany, Fardin served as Senior Vice President for Development and Foundation Operations at Albany Medical Center where he oversaw fund raising for both the college and hospital. Through the implementation of his strategic initiatives, every function reported significant growth during his tenure. Fardin also served as secretary for the Albany Prize which is the largest prize in medicine in the United States. Fardin began his fund raising career at Albany Law School where his responsibilities progressed from Gift Coordinator to Director of Institutional Affairs during his six-year tenure. He also spent two years as a fund raising consultant for Morin & Anderson, Inc. where his clients included the Albany Institute of History and Art and Double H Hole in the Woods.

Lawrence M. Schell, Director of the Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities, also is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. His research on environmental health focuses on the physical growth and development of children, particularly the effects of pollutants among disadvantaged groups. Put in anthropological terms, his research concerns adaptation, or lack thereof, to urbanism. A corollary theme of his work is the role of socio-cultural factors in health. His recent publications are based on three NIH funded studies: two ongoing studies of Mohawk adolescents and young adults, and an earlier study conducted in Albany, NY investigating influences on lead levels of mothers and infants and the effects of lead on infant development. Recent publications include a paper in Pediatrics on the effects of polychlorinated biphenyls and lead on the timing of human sexual maturation. Other recent publications have detailed the role of maternal diet and body composition on the transfer of lead from mother to fetus, and the influence of infant diet on the infant's acquisition of environmental lead, and the growth and development of Akwesasne Mohawk adolescents. He also has published several reviews on urbanism, pollution and child health. He received his Ph.D. in biological anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania; his B.A. from Oberlin College.

Our “flat” globalized world requires all public health students to be aware of the implications of global health and disease patterns and to have opportunities for serving those in resource-restricted countries. As Director of the Center for Global Health, one of Whittaker’s primary responsibilities is to open doors for students and faculty interested in collaborations with partner schools and institutions worldwide for research, internships, and study abroad opportunities. She is interested in expanding our diversity by recruiting international students and finding opportunities for our students to serve abroad through short study tours as well as programs such as the Masters International /Peace Corps Program. As we add global health courses, students will be able to obtain a Certificate in Global Health as a complement to the MPH degree.

Kevin Williams joined the faculty of UAlbany’s Department of Psychology in 1987 and has served as Dean of Graduate Studies since June, 2010. Prior to his current role, he served as director of undergraduate advising in Psychology from 1994-2005, graduate director from 2005-2007, and department chair from 2007-2010. He has also been area head for the industrial-organizational psychology and the social-personality graduate doctoral programs. His major areas of research are (1) human motivation and performance, where he studies the self- regulatory processes that guide goal strivings and goal revision over time; (2) the psychology of blame, where his work explores the social-cognitive processes that underlie the allocation of blame for accidents; and (3) employee assessment and appraisal, where his work seeks to identify best practices for assessing and evaluating employee aptitude and performance. His research appears in such journals as Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Performance, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Academy of Management Journal. Williams received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of South Carolina in 1984.

Professor Edelgard Wulfert works with pathological gamblers at the Center for Problem Gamblers in Albany and the University at Albany’s Center for Stress and Anxiety Disorders. She can offer opinions, commentary and advice for problem gamblers whose addiction leads them from sports teams to scratch tickets, casinos to Keno. Wulfert offers to share her expertise and to explain the science behind the trends. She has been a member of the UAlbany Department of Psychology faculty since 1988. Wulfert is a productive scholar who maintains an active research program and has published and lectured extensively in the field of behavior analysis, with particular research interests in substance abuse and sexual risk behaviors. She earned her doctorate in 1987 from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.